Jack Tramiel

Born Idek Tramielski, Tramiel and his family lived for nearly five years in a Jewish ghetto in Poland. Eventually, Tramiel and family were sent by train to Auschwitz, and he was fortunate enough to escape death for a year, though other family and friends perished, until the liberation of the camp in 1945.

Tramiel stayed in Europe for two more years before immigrating to the United States with his wife, Helen, a fellow camp (Bergen-Belsen) survivor. Tramiel had three sons, joined the U.S. Army for four years and began working in a typewriter repair shop in New York. He bought his own shop in the Bronx, then moved to Toronto, where he started a company called Commodore, a manufacturer of typewriters and adding machines. Commodore went public in 1962, was successful, then ran into legal and financial trouble, leading to Tramiel surrendering partial control of the company to investors.

Tramiel moved operations to Silicon Valley and had success with a hand-held computer, but finding himself at the whim of suppliers, made a dramatic move by acquiring MOS Technology. His team produced one of the first microcomputers and by 1977 was waging an aggressive campaign against rivals Apple and Tandy. It was about this time Tramiel was credited with his most famous quote: "Business is war."

After a few years of skyrocket success, Tramiel lost control of Commodore to Irving Gould. Tramiel went on to take over Atari in 1984, but the company was at a low ebb, and despite the strong efforts of his son Sam, the industry was changing quickly and Tramiel eventually folded Atari into JTS.
Tramiel is now semi-retired and active in philanthropy, including support of the Holocaust Memorial Museum.

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